Card deck of Jokers

Chapter 16

"Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realise that breathing is hard"

~David Levithan~

A red glaze

The park bench was cold and numbed my legs. there had been a fast decline in the warm weather and it was much cooler recently.

I knew that I was meant to be in school but it was all too overwhelming. A day off wouldn't hurt. Especially if no one found me out, right?

I decided it was better for me to be alone today. Not because I was upset or anything but I just needed the space to think. I had already spent around 3 months now in Australia and I saw Delmira, Katy, Lucy, Leo and Felix as friends by now.

I didn't see them as family though. I don't think any of us saw ourselves as family. We were more of trusted friends than family and that was ok.

We lived under the same household and had a wonderful caretaker that was mostly a mother figure to all of us on a personal level than a family level.

When living in a foster care home you never see the others around you as family. Only because you never know when you'll be torn apart again. It's the most simple rule when being taken from place to place. Everyone in the system knows it.

Plus, now that I think about it, if you were to ever like someone who was in the same foster care home as you...it would be extremely hard to explain if you did actually think of yourselves as family.

There's so much to being in the system than people know. It draining, exhausting, painful but at the same time...it's makes me quite curious all the same.

It was also safe to say that everyone had their own sad backgrounds and everyone respected the fact that none of us wanted to share anything about it. Me in particular.

Felix just happened to be an exception on my part mostly because I stumbled upon his hidden secret by accident. I had no intention of knowing what type of person he was nor did I care but I did feel the need to help him.

It had been a week since the heat wave. Of course I was better and much more sane, but every time I tried to remember what had happened I just couldn't remember.

All I know is that I passed out in the nurses office. What happened after and how I got back home I never knew. I could've tried to ask Kye and Mark but I just wasn't interested.

I suppose it didn't really matter though. I would remember as time went by. And even if I didn't I guessed it wouldn't have been of much importance to me.

What seemed important right now was what Kye made known to me a couple days back.

It stuck with me so much so that it felt like it was being drilled into my head.The fact that he suspected that we had a spy in the midst of us was scary. What if they attacked us personally and we weren't prepared for it. What would we do then?

I couldn't imagine any of them ever hurting me but then again...isn't that the whole point of being a spy? To trick the others to believe that you was their ally?

I wouldn't have been surprised if they all suspected me though. I did just join after all with such little notice. It looks and sounds really sketchy from an outsiders view but what can you do?